


Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere, Any Way

by orphan_account



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: M/M, Overwhelming amounts of obliviousness, Phone Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-08
Updated: 2014-01-08
Packaged: 2018-01-08 01:06:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1126565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Patrick loses a bet to Sharpy and has to work on a phone sex line for a week. Sharpy, troll that he is, gives the number to Tazer and tells him its an anonymous sex line.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere, Any Way

Patrick clutches his beer angrily and glares in Jonny’s general direction. He hates it when Jonny decides to come out with them, because recently Jonny’s had this awful tendency of going home with pretty much every person Patrick tries to chat up in his vicinity.  
  
The first few times it happened, Patrick brushed it off as a coincidence. He had this habit of hitting on short blondes at the time, and Jonny would waltz over all friendly like they were best buddies or something even though they barely tolerated each other on the best of days. Then he would work his dumb look-at-me-I’m-a-nice-Canadian-boy charm on the girl and ruin it for Patrick by going home with her with a shrug and slight smirk in his direction. Patrick figured maybe this was happening because they had the same type, so the next few times he hit on some taller brunette chicks, some redheads—Jonny went home with them too.

Fed up with it all, he decided to hit on this appallingly rude and vaguely unattractive chick the next time they were out just to see what Jonny would do. By the time Patrick went to the bar to get her a drink and came back, she’d totally forgotten Kaner existed and was staring up at Jonny with a coy smile, laughing at something he was saying. That little faker, there was no possible way anything Jonny said could be even remotely funny. Patrick spitefully downed the drink he’d gotten her and flipped them off.

A week later, Patrick took the next logical step and started chatting up some guy, because at least there was no way Jonny would take home a dude. The man was seriously hot, too, like Swedish underwear model levels hot, and Patrick was definitely on his way to scoring this time because the guy was blatantly staring at Patrick’s mouth while he was talking. Turns out Patrick had been aggressively wrong about Jonny’s sexual preferences though, and there were bite marks on Jonny’s neck staring Kaner in the face for days reminding him of that little miscalculation.

He has no idea what Jonny's goddamn problem is. Patrick tries to chalk it up to the fact that Jonny’s just jealous of his brilliance on the ice and has to compensate for it some other way, but that logic doesn’t really hold up too well when he thinks about it sober.  
  
"He’s doing it again, the fucker," Patrick whines this time to Sharpy, who just snorts at him.  
  
"It’s 'cause you've got no game, Peeks. Tazer's just doing them all a favor," Sharpy grins. "Maybe you should work on that smooth talk and turn the tables a bit. Talk some girl chatting up Tazer into leaving with you instead. Or maybe he's just got a better ass than you and you're shit outta luck."  
  
"Fuck you, like I would ever want go home with anyone who's into  _Tazer_. They're clearly deranged and have horrible taste."  
  
"But you couldn't do it even if you tried." Sharpy grins, ruffling Pat's curls in a way that's clearly meant to be mocking.  
  
He bats Sharpy's hand away, scowling. "I so could if I tried," he says indignantly.  
  
Sharpy’s grin turns sharklike. "You know what Peeks, let's make a bet. In one week, if you can get anyone Tazer has his eyes on to ditch him and go home with you instead, I'll shave off my hair.”

Patrick narrows his eyes at him, not sure if this is all a trick or not. “No way you would do that. Not you. The hair is off-limits for all bets.”

Sharpy shrugs. “I just know there’s no way I’d lose this one.”

With that possibility on the table, Patrick would be willing to take the bet even if there was only the slimmest chance of winning, but joke’s on Sharpy, because there’s no way Patrick can’t win over a single chick.  
  
"And if I lose?" Patrick asks.  
  
"If you lose, Peeks-" Sharpy's eyes light up like he's been gifted with the answer to all of life's questions. "If you lose, you have to work as a phone sex operator every night for a week," he says as he starts cackling hysterically. "Oh god, if you can't even-" He has to pause to catch his breath, he's actually laughing that hard. "If you can't even chat someone up at a bar, I'd love to see how you would succeed at dirty talk."  
  
"Motherfucker, I'm the king of dirty talk," he says, glowering at Sharpy. "I'll take the deal."

 

 

A week later, Patrick finds himself sitting on the couch idly flicking through television channels and scowling as he waits for his phone to ring. It figures he’s the only one dumb enough to make inadvisable bets with Sharpy. Everyone else has probably learned their lesson by now.

The first sound of his ringtone makes him startle and knock his beer onto his lap, causing him to flail and kick his phone off the couch. He makes a dive for it, landing in a graceless heap on the ground with a pained grunt. Perfect, some physical pain to match the psychological agony brought on by this whole ordeal.

He groans and decides to just suck it up and pick up the call.

“Hey baby,” he drawls into the receiver, trying to slow his breathing so that he sounds more like he’s ready to blow someone’s mind with his awe-inspiring seduction techniques and less like he’s ready to finish the last leg of a marathon.

“So, how do you want me tonight?” he hears a rich, smooth female voice say on the other end, and okay, Patrick can totally do this. He can. He’ll just pretend she’s his smoking hot girlfriend or something.

“I’ve been thinking about you, about us, about this, the entire day,” the woman continues coyly, voice dropping half a register towards the end. She goes on to describe the various things she’s been imagining them doing in graphic, graphic detail, her voice dripping with suggestiveness in a sinful manner that sends shivers up his spine.

Patrick is overwhelmed and undeniably a little turned on, and for a moment he thinks maybe this phone sex business won’t be too bad. He can almost imagine a gorgeous, pliant lover on the other end running her small soft hands over her own body while wishing Patrick would come over and replace those hands with his own.

He’s seconds away from reaching into his pants when—

“Will you let me touch your tentacle?” the girl whispers breathily, which, _what_? Pat goes from being lazily aroused to downright horrified in two seconds flat. And really, that wouldn’t have been the worst thing, but she starts talking about bondage and altars and pentagrams and that’s when he starts to get a little freaked out. Like, okay, everyone’s allowed to have their own kinks and all, it’s fine, whatever, but it’s also a bit too much for Patrick to handle on the first call. He’s not terrible at improvisation though, and the rest of the session doesn’t go as terribly as he expects so he’s pretty proud of himself when she hangs up with a throaty promise to call again soon.

Most of the calls are thankfully, not as bizarre as that. Some are fairly standard and relatively vanilla, but those are the ones that end up being the most boring after a while. He does, however, get this one girl who wants him to pretend to be Kanye West and then proceeds to hang up on him when his rapping skills aren't up to par with her standards. Like, wow. Rude  _and_ delusional. Patrick’s fucking amazing at rap.

Just before he’s nearly done with his shift and he’s crossing his fingers, hoping no one else will solicit his services tonight since he’s tired and hungry and angry at the world, his ringtone starts blaring again. He jabs his finger against the answer button viciously.

“What would you like, babe?” he asks, trying and probably failing miserably to sensual and interested and not at all spiteful.

“First I want you to suck me off in the bathroom. Can you do that for me?” a smooth male voice says into his ear. For a second Patrick thinks he hears muffled giggles in the background.

“Whatever you want, gorgeous. Do you want me to press you gently against a stall and suck you off slowly and leisurely, or would you prefer it fast and rough? I could let you fuck my throat if you wanted.” This is probably the third time he’s said some variation of that to someone today. And okay, Patrick’s probably not imagining things because that was definitely a low whistle he heard coming from the background.

“Any of those. I just want you to do something else for me, too.”

“Yeah? Anything for you, baby,” Patrick replies, fiddling idly with a loose thread on his shirt.

“Call me captain.” The background giggling intensifies.

“Oh yeah, captain of what?” Patrick asks, trying to sound as coy as he can manage while stifling a yawn.

“Of the Chicago Blackhawks,” the other guy says, smirk evident in his voice. There's a pause. The muffled giggles suddenly become full blown laughter. Patrick has a moment of realization before his face quickly heats up.

“Shut the fuck up Sharpy,” he growls as he realizes why the voice sounds so familiar. He glares down at his phone. “You have me on speakerphone don’t you, you dickwad. Who the fuck is that giggling like a little girl in the background?”

“That’s Seabs providing the one man laughtrack. Duncs is here too. They’ve been recruited to join me in mocking you for the rest of your life.”

“Wow, you lot can go fuck yourselves,” Patrick says loudly before throwing his phone across the room. It’s saved from destruction by landing on top of one of his hoodies. Shame. He sighs and rubs his face, glad that that’s over with at least for tonight.

This whole phone sex gig was not at all what Patrick expected. For one, it’s apparently not enough to just have a sexy voice and know how to moan appropriately at the right moments. Working as a phone sex operator actually requires an inordinate amount of creativity and quick thinking. You have to be able to react to different scenarios, adjusting to circumstances and playing along believably in a way that keeps the customer nested in their little fantasy world. It’s tiring. And sometimes it takes an enormous amount of willpower to keep yourself from cracking up, which is the worst.

While it’s probably too late for Patrick to make it out of this ordeal with his dignity intact, he hopes he can at least make it out without being too traumatized.

 

 

The next day Patrick gets into a fight with Jonny again, which, surprise surprise, alert the media (except don’t actually because it’s not like Patrick _likes_ bad PR). By now everyone on the team knows to just roll their eyes and leave them to it.  
  
It starts with Jonny criticizing Patrick's play in their last game, and yeah sure, Patrick’s defense wasn’t exactly stellar during the second period and it's not like he can't take the critique, but he's so sick of Jonny's attitude and temperament and his irritating fucking face. Patrick's done, and he has no reservations about letting Jonny know this by shouting it into his face in front of the team before shoving him aside and storming off. Jonny has this way of getting under Patrick's skin like no one else does, and literally everything he does makes Patrick want to smash his face into wall.  
  
Jonathan Toews walks casually down the street? Fuck that, walking is for douchebags.  
  
Jonathan Toews talks to the cameras? Shut up, no one cares how fucking boring you are.

Jonathan Toews kisses babies and plays with puppies? That’s just fucking—well okay fine, that’s not particularly irritating, but it irritates Patrick that he doesn’t find it irritating, so it counts. Whatever.  
  
Patrick’s not really sure how the animosity really started. He’d seen Jonny around, even played him once, back when they were really young, maybe eleven or twelve. Even then Patrick had been impressed by Toews’ natural talent and skill. The first time they played together on the Junior Flyers, Patrick might have been crushing a bit. Okay, a lot. What? Toews was confident, proficient, and attractive, and thirteen-year-old Patrick was a sucker for all three. Jonny also had this habit of watching Patrick a lot in a non-murderous and possibly even admiring way, but every time they interacted Jonny would either be politely dismissive or kind of standoffish and douchey. Patrick still doesn’t know if it was because he inadvertently did something to piss him off or if Jonny’s dislike of him was just irrational.

Fast-forward several years to when they’d just started playing for Chicago. Patrick was nervous, secretly afraid of not living up to expectations, and compensating for it by being cocky and insufferable. Jonny got the brunt of his attitude because they often played on the same line, were usually paired up for publicity, and roomed together a lot on the road. Jonny didn’t make it much better, being so serious all the time in addition to bossy and bad-tempered. They would fight about everything from hockey plays to the location of Patrick’s dirty sock (near the foot of Jonny’s bed), getting irritated at each other over the smallest things. One time he even woke up to Tazer punching the shit out of his bed like a fucking lunatic.

In short, whenever they laugh and tell the media and their fans that they hate each other, it’s only really a joke due to the competence of the Blackhawks PR department.

 

 

Apparently Patrick’s pretty good at channeling all his rage into productivity though, or in this case, aggressively hot phone sex. He is on a fucking roll here. If he weren’t so ridiculously proficient at hockey, he might just think he’s found his one true calling.

About halfway through his shift, Patrick’s self-satisfaction is diminished when some guy dials in only to sound utterly unimpressed with the entire proceeding. The guy even gives a judgmental little snort when Patrick greets him with a standard, “Hey, babe.” But well, it’s not like anybody forced him to dial a phone sex line. Patrick’s totally a pro now; he can work with hard-to-get.

Patrick starts by suggesting a variety of different things to try and intuit what the client’s looking for, but he’s met with cold indifference each time. The man answers with short, clipped responses delivered in a nearly flat tone, making Patrick increasingly frustrated after each failed attempt at engagement.

And then, finally, he _gets_ it. “I can be anyone you want, yeah? Anything you want,” Patrick says softly. And there. That’s the moment of hesitation Patrick was looking for.

“Like you ever give me anything I want asshole,” the man finally spits out, and Patrick is startled and confused for a second until he realizes the guy is pretending.

“You’re so goddamn frustrating. You’ve always been so goddamn frustrating, and sometimes I hate you so much that I can’t stand looking at you.” And then, in a quieter voice, “But most of the time, I just—I just want you so much I feel like I can’t fucking breathe.” The words come out raw, intense, and probably more devastatingly honest than the man had intended. Patrick can feel his pulse elevate in response for reasons he doesn’t quite understand.

“Sometimes when I get angry I fantasize about strangling the living daylights out of you,” he continues, words pouring out angrily and relentlessly like he can’t stop once he’s started. “But other times I just want to take you home and—and push you onto your stomach and shove your face into the bed so that I can’t see your fucking face. So that any obnoxious shit that comes out of your mouth would be muffled by the sheets. I’d pull your ass up and make you take my fingers, then just drive into you without giving you time to adjust because it’s not like you deserve me being fucking nice and considerate. Not when you're the least considerate douchebag on this side of the planet.”  
  
Patrick can feel himself flushing with humiliation, anger, indignation, arousal, everything. Screw this guy if he thinks Patrick would just lie there and take it like a meek little shit. It takes him a moment to remember the guy isn't thinking about Patrick Kane at all. He's thinking about another man he knows personally, and he's pathetic enough to dial a phone sex service to get closer to his little fantasies. The realization doesn't stop Patrick from reacting emotionally though—doesn’t stop him from digging his nails angrily into the fabric of his couch.

“I bet you could come without me touching you,” the man continues. He’s panting roughly on the other end, and Patrick can tell he’s got one hand wrapped around his cock, desperately working on getting himself off. “You'd be begging by the end, begging me to give it to you faster. You’d come first, way before me because I bet your stamina is for shit, and I wouldn’t pull out. I’d keep thrusting into you, over and over again until you’re gasping for breath and writhing on my cock from overstimulation.”  
  
“You’re such a dick,” Patrick blurts out viciously, not caring if the guy gets angry and never calls again. It's not like Patrick’s a real phone sex operator. It's not like he needs the money, being a fucking professional hockey player in the NHL. He doesn't have to sit here and listen to this shit. He doesn't understand why he's so worked up about the call, either. It’s just that there's something about this particular scenario, or maybe this particular caller, that makes him irrationally defensive. It feels like being hit too close to home.  
  
“You could stop being so fucking contrary all the time,” Patrick says heatedly. “And maybe work on being less of a controlling asshole” he yells, before hanging up and throwing the phone across the bed angrily, watching it bounce a few times and smack the headboard. He has no idea why he just said that, no idea who he thinks he's talking to, and he doesn't want to think about it anymore.  
  
He glances down at himself to find that he's still hard, and feels unbelievably betrayed by his own dick.

He looks at the clock and finds that he’s only halfway through his shift, but there’s no way he’s doing this anymore. Not tonight. He reaches for his phone and turns it off.

 

 

The next day at morning practice Tazer won’t look at him.

Patrick’s shouting something at him and he just stares at his unlaced skates with a fierce determination like he’s forgotten how to tie them or something.

Strange.

 

 

When Patrick sits down for his fifth session, he thinks he’s just about ready for anything. He’s certainly heard enough that there’s nothing much that will really shock him anymore. What he doesn't expect, though, is another call from the same guy from two days ago.  
  
The man is silent on the other end for long enough that Patrick’s just about to hang up, when he suddenly speaks. “Hi, it’s—uh, I’ve called before. Recently. I don’t know if you remember, since you probably get a lot of calls. You swore at me a lot and told me to stop being a controlling asshole.”  
  
“Oh. You.” Patrick says dryly. “I remember you.”  
  
“Yeah, uh, that was...good. Last time. Convincing.”

Is this guy for real? Patrick fucking hung up on him last time. “I’m not going to just sit here and listen to that again.”  
  
“Oh. Well. That's not what I'm here for. Well, I mean it is, since that’s the entire purpose of this line,” he says flatly. He sounds less sure of himself this time though. Less angry, too. “But—not like _that_. Not like last time.”  
  
“Fine. What do you want?” Patrick demands, not even pretending to try and assume his flirtier phone sex persona.

“I want your mouth.” The man says bluntly. “You keep…chewing on everything, and it's driving me insane. It’s like everything in your line of vision is game for you to put in your fucking mouth. You could at least have the decency of not constantly biting and licking your lips. I’m pretty sure at this point the entire fucking NH—entire world is going to punch you out for it.”

Patrick opens his mouth to respond (indignantly, because what’s wrong with a little oral fixation), but the guy just keeps talking and doesn’t give him the opportunity to retaliate.  
  
“Once, when we were rooming together, you woke me up making these noises and you were just…I don’t know, sucking at your knuckles in your sleep for some reason, and I couldn’t go back to sleep, not after that. So I just lay there tossing and turning, so fucking frustrated and clenching the side of my pillow so hard I thought I might burst a vein. So I just gave in and I…jerked myself off while staring at your mouth. I remember I was so fucking mad at you the next day for making me lose sleep before a game that I yelled at you. A lot. And you gave back a good as you got.” He chuckles a little bitterly. “I’m such a mess and it’s mostly your fault.”

For a while, Patrick’s not sure how to respond to that. It’s a lot more emotional than he’s used to getting.

“It’s okay, baby,” Patrick finally says. “Let me just…let me take care of you.” And Patrick does, coaxing him through a slow and inexplicably intimate description of Patrick’s mouth wrapped him, until the man finally comes with a strangled cry. For a moment, they just sit there in silence, breathing quietly into the phone. The other man finally speaks.

“It’d be a lot easier if I didn’t love you,” he says, sounding tired and kind of resigned.

Patrick doesn’t know what to do with unexpected love confessions meant for someone else, so he wisely doesn’t say anything.

The man hangs up without another word.

 

 

Patrick’s at the bar getting drinks to celebrate their win over the Blues when he hears a shout and the sound of something breaking back at their table. He comes back to find their captain missing and Sharpy looking kind of sheepish.

“What’s going on?” Patrick asks, confused.

“It’s done. It’s finally happened. Sharpy’s finally broken Tazer,” Seabs says, looking reluctantly impressed.

“The inevitable,” Stalberg adds, clapping Patrick on the shoulder on his way past as he heads towards a group of girls who’ve been making eyes at him.

“How the fuck did you break Tazer?” Patrick asks. “You didn’t even break him with the whole pregnant girlfriend prank, and that one was horrifying.”

“I think Tazer’s just figured out who he’s been calling on that phone sex number I gave him.”

Patrick snorts. “What’s up with your obsession with phone sex lines, man? Something you wanna tell us?”

“Just one phone sex line actually,” Sharpy says grinning, giving Patrick a significant look like he’s supposed to get something from that. Patrick just stares blankly at him.

“Aw, come on, Peeks. You can do it.” Sharpy says with mock encouragement.

And then—“Motherfucker, you sent him to _my_ phone sex line?” Patrick says through gritted teeth, lowering his voice in case someone on Deadspin has been waiting their entire career to publish an article on Patrick’s double life as a phone sex operator.

Patrick has a sinking suspicion he knows exactly which of his calls were from Tazer, and well fuck. Jonny’s got some serious issues.

“Why is he so upset, anyway? It’s not like I’m gonna run around telling everybody he’s in love with—” Patrick blinks, and everything slots into place. Someone Jonny’s mad at all the time. Someone he’s roomed with. Someone on the team.

“— _me_. Fuck. Jonny’s in love with _me_.”

 

 

Patrick spends a lot longer than he’d care to admit being really, really confused about that revelation. All signs point to yes and everything, but he just can’t bring himself to really believe it. A week ago, if someone had asked Patrick to give them a list of Things Tazer Likes, he might’ve put down stuff like hockey, recreational fishing, stealing Patrick’s potential hookups, et cetera. He might’ve put himself dead last on that list as well, because somewhere deep down Jonny must be at least a little bit fond of the guy who’d won a cup with him and put up with his serious ass for five, six years. The possibility that Patrick might rank a lot higher on that list than he’d thought just seems so implausible, and the idea is more than a little jarring.

Everything falls into place for Patrick a week later, when Tazer invites the guys over to his place to hang out and play video games. That’s when Patrick really _notices_ the framed photo on Jonny’s wall, the one that always stays with Jonny when he moves into and out of condos, the picture of the two of them at the net, Kaner and Tazer, Jonny and Patrick, the picture that somehow reads like a promise. He’s seen it countless times, but he never really thought about what it could mean. It never occurred to Patrick that it might be weird for Jonny, who had always given the indication the strongest emotion he felt towards Patrick was severe irritation, to be so attached to that picture.

Patrick figures it probably also means something that he himself has a photo of him and Jonny on his dresser, arms around each other’s shoulder and grinning widely at the camera being held by Patrick’s mom. It was taken some time after the 2010 playoffs, when he and Jonny were too busy being elated and smug to be particularly annoyed with one another. Patrick always thought he liked the photo because his hair was looking pretty swag, but maybe it also has something do with Jonny’s dumb laugh and how happy they both look in it. The picture sits between various photos of Patrick and his family—Patrick with his parents, Patrick with his sisters, Patrick with his grandpa—but it doesn’t look out of place among them at all.

After he takes a while to get used to the possibility of him and Jonny as a _thing_ , he feels this irrational bout of anger towards Jonny because, seriously? They could have been having so much fucking amazing makeup sex after all those fights they’ve had, only they didn’t because Jonny was holding out on him, the prick. Jonny owes him like, so many blow jobs for that. But then afterwards he just sort of feels bad for Jonny, because maybe his Canadian robot programming just came with a weaksauce algorithm for emotional logic.

Never let it be said that Patrick isn’t a go-getter though. He’s got a plan; he’s going to stealth-date Jonny until the other man is finally convinced that they could work out together, and then Patrick will set out to win himself a hockey robot. He wonders if Evgeni Malkin has a manual for these kinds of things.

 

 

Except the (admittedly vague and poorly thought-out) plan doesn’t go as smoothly as Patrick had hoped, mainly because Tazer just looks really confused by everything Patrick does and kind of perplexed about whether or not he should be angry at him just on principle.

First Patrick tries to keep it simple and casually invite Jonny to the movies, like as bros or something.

“Hey Tazer!” Patrick shouts across the locker room. “Do you wanna go catch Breaking Dawn with me tonight?”

Jonny graces him with a blank stare. “Breaking what?”

“It’s this intense movie about family, loyalty, self-sacrif—“

“Isn’t that the Twilight thing with the vampire baby?” Leddy says, cutting Patrick off. Jonny furrows his brows in confusion.

“Why on _earth_ would I want to watch that? And why are you asking me?” He slams his locker shut and gives Patrick a weird look before his phone goes off and he leaves to go take the call.

Well, that was an unambiguous failure. Patrick decides he’s just going to have to be stealthier about it next time.

 

 

The perfect opportunity comes when Patrick hears that Jonny’s called in sick because of the flu, because fuck yeah, Patrick’s got this. He knows how this goes. He’s going to wow Jonny with his caretaking abilities until Jonny realizes that he’s the ideal partner, and then they’ll ride off together into the cold Canadian sunset.

After practice ends, he heads over to Jonny’s Condo and raps on the door a few times. When Jonny doesn’t answer, he knocks more obnoxiously until Jonny finally yanks open the door, looking grumpy and pitiful.

“You’re sick.” Patrick says helpfully.

“Okay but why are you here?” Jonny says slowly, like Patrick might be confused or something. He sounds miserable and seriously loopy, kind of like how he usually sounds in the mornings but amplified times ten.

“I just said. Because you’re sick. Move aside, loser,” he says, shoving Jonny to the side and forcing his way in. Jonny trails after him looking a bit lost, especially when Patrick plops a bag of stuff on his coffee table.

“Ibuprofen, cough drops, and soup. And DVDs of boring movies because you’re a boring human. Although I also brought Twilight, in case you were willing to reconsider your terrible taste in film.”

“What the fuck, Kaner. I can take care of myself. We’re not all losers like you who can’t function independently of our mothers.” This is totally a lie and they both know it. Jonny’s probably called his mom more than once to sniffle into the receiver and sound miserable at her. He’s just not man enough to admit it.

“My mom is great. You’re just jealous,” Patrick says as he jams one hand against Jonny’s forehead. It’s too warm. “Where’s your thermometer?” he asks as he wrestles Jonny into lying down on the couch. Jonny points to the second drawer of a cabinet, probably too tired to protest any further and too delirious to be indignant about Patrick randomly barging in and being a bossy little shit.

Patrick fishes it out of the cabinet and slips one of the disposable plastic sleeves on the tip before sticking it into Jonny’s mouth. Jonny jerks his head away and glares, but he keeps the thermometer in place under his tongue. “Could’ve done it myself,” he mumbles grumpily around the device. His face is fever-flushed and his hair is sticking up oddly. Patrick resists the urge to pinch his cheek.

In the end, after Patrick feeds him the appropriate meds, Jonny gives in to morbid curiosity and lets Patrick put on Twilight and they fall asleep together to the sound of Edward Cullen being really vague about how long he’s been seventeen.

 

 

Tazer shows up to morning practice two days later with a determined look instead of a confused one, like he thinks he’s finally figured out what’s going on. He corners Patrick and drags him somewhere the rest of the team can’t hear.

“I know what you’re doing, Kaner.” He says, gripping Patrick’s forearm tightly in a way that will probably leave bruises. “I know you figured out it was me on the phone getting all worked up about your dumb face, and I don’t need or want your pity,” he spits.

“Good for you, because you don’t fucking have it!” Patrick replies angrily, because by now he’s been conditioned to respond to Jonny’s anger with more anger. He meets Jonny’s eyes steadily though, wills him to believe it. Eventually Jonny’s eyes look a little less hard, and his grip on Patrick’s arm loosens.

“Good!” Jonny shouts.

“Great!” Patrick shouts back.

Then Jonny jerks Patrick forward by his arm, and all of a sudden they’re kissing furiously, Patrick’s nails digging into Jonny’s shoulders as Jonny slips cold hands under Patrick’s t-shirt. He pushes at Jonny until his back slams against the wall, taking advantage of Jonny’s little exhale of surprise to invade his mouth. Well, this is one way to do it. Patrick was envisioning a nice dinner and candlelit confessions, but this is certainly also good. Very good. Especially that thing Jonny’s doing with his tongue. He really needs to keep doing that.

 

 

It turns out that Kaner and Tazer, when not stubbornly dedicated to hating each other, are kind of nauseatingly adorable. According to Sharpy, anyway. They still have screaming fights on the bench—that much doesn’t change and nobody really expected it to. Sometimes though, they nudge each other back and forth like five-year-olds and grin stupidly at one another, which is when Sharpy breaks out the gagging motions. It’s hard to take Sharpy’s mocking seriously though, when he mostly just looks insufferably proud of his own handiwork.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry not sorry. Basically 5k of it-sounded-a-lot-better-in-my-head.


End file.
